Showing results by narrator "Steven Crossley" in All Categories

"The Chimes" focuses on Trotty, a poor elderly messenger who is filled with gloom over reports of crime and immorality in the newspapers. After losing faith in society, Trotty follows a call to the church bell tower, where he encounters goblins that teach him - and listeners - lessons in the form of visions about the mistreatment of the lower class in society. This story of social awakening inspires listeners to treat everyone with fair kindness.

Someone is trying to kill leading British Shakespearean actor, husband, father, ladies' man, and soon-to-be knight of the realm Winstanley Fortescue. The actor, rehearsing his starring role in the forthcoming play Serpent in the Heather, is conked on the head backstage. He falls off a ladder and lands on the resident pest-control officer, Montmorency D. Mousa (otherwise known as Monty), the company cat. When Fortescue comes to, he finds, to his horror, that he has become trapped in Monty's body.

Doug Perkins; his partner, Gerry; and their cat, Pandora, have one job to do: spin gaffes into gold. But this cozy little London PR agency - a better environment for Pandora than profits - is about to be involved in a disastrous affaire dentaire. Endicott Zayle, dentist to the rich and famous - as well as to Doug and Gerry - has a problem of royal proportions. He just killed a beautiful woman with an experimental anesthetic. Or did he?

A trip to London turns deadly...until a cat helps foil a nearly purrfect crime. Larkin's Luxury Tours Number 79 is a traveler's nightmare. The problems started in Zurich, when one of the group died under mysterious circumstances. Now the remaining tour members have landed in London, tight lipped, fearful, and ready to ask for their money back. It's up to Doug Perkins of PR firm Perkins and Tate to restore their spirits.

Doug Perkins doesn't dislike cats - he just isn't especially interested in them. But the struggling young London public relations firm Perkins and Tate can't afford to be choosy about the jobs they take. So when Doug is asked to do the PR for a glorified feline extravaganza called Cats Through the Ages, he doesn't hesitate. But it isn't long before he wishes he had hesitated. There are some very valuable cats on exhibit - even a few feline celebrities.

Two corpses. A country on the edge of a political precipice. A conspiracy so bold it would make Machiavelli wince. Andrew Marr's debut novel imagines what really might be going on behind the door of 10 Downing Street. When a young investigative reporter is found dead on the streets of London few people notice. But when another body - minus its head and hands - is washed up on the banks of the Thames, its grisly condition arouses a little more interest.

Bill Buford spends a wild night in the park; Jonathan Safran Foer envisions it as a tiny, transplanted piece of a mythical Sixth Borough; and Marie Winn answers definitively Holden Caulfield's question of where the ducks go when the park's ponds freeze over. There are bird sightings and fish sightings; Jackie Kennedy and James Brown sightings; and pieces by Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, and Francine Prose. This vibrant collection presents Central Park in all its many-faceted glory, a 51-block swath of special magic.

Central Park is perhaps the most well-trod and familiar green space in the country. It is both a refuge from the city and Manhattan's very heart; a respite from the urban grind and a hive of activity all its own. Eight hundred forty-three carefully planned acres allow some 37 million visitors each year to come and get lost in a sense of nature. Unsurprisingly, the park also inspires a wealth of great writing, and here Andrew Blauner collects some of the finest fiction and nonfiction - 20 pieces in all.

Trapped in a London laboratory during a worker uprising in 1924, ex-artillery officer and physics instructor Jeremy Tuft awakens 150 years later - in a neo-medieval society whose inhabitants have forgotten how to build or operate machinery. Not only have his fellow Londoners forgotten most of what humankind used to know, before civilization collapsed, but they don't particularly care to re-learn any of it. Though he is at first disconcerted by the failure of his own era's smug doctrine of Progress, Tuft eventually decides that post-civilized life is simpler, more peaceful.

Secret agent Mr. Adolph Verloc operates from a seedy Soho shop, where he deals in pornography and espionage. Idle, treacherous, and self-righteous, he makes the life of his wife, Winnie, one of silent misery. When Verloc is assigned to plant a bomb at Greenwich Observatory, his plans go terribly awry, and his family has to deal with the tragic repercussions of his actions. Joseph Conrad's dark satire on English society, while rooted in the Edwardian period, remains strikingly contemporary.

Sebastian, the alchemist's son, must face a new evil. An old enemy, a magician whose power lies in stealing souls, has reappeared in a new and cunning disguise. He is using an ancient spell book to bring about a terror beyond imagining. Once again, Pip and Tim brave sorcery and danger to help Sebastian as he pursues his enemies through the centuries.

Julia hasn't seen her husband, Max, for almost a year - but he's just walked through the door of their home looking as breathtaking as ever. Max has come to make things right with his beloved Julia. However, a lot can happen in a year, and Max hasn't bargained on meeting two surprise little twin girls. Now Max has two weeks to prove he can be a wonderful husband and father....

Life has been difficult for 10-year-old Colley Trevelyan ever since he lost his mother and father in a fatal carriage accident. Most of the servants have been dismissed, and the house feels empty. To make matters worse, soon he will be living with his aunt and uncle who have never liked him. One night he suddenly wakes up wrapped tightly in a rough blanket. As he struggles to free himself, a strange man carries him to a waiting carriage.

Long ago, in a land by the sea, 12-year-old Aaron lives with his mother in the wooded countryside. Because the boy is mute, he depends on his mother completely. But when a sudden blizzard strands his mother in a distant town, Aaron finds himself alone for the first time in his life. Setting out in the snow to look for his mother, the boy embarks on a perilous, silent journey that will carry him to the eerie Half-a-Moon Inn. There, held captive by the sharp-eyed Miss Grackle, Aaron will discover her wicked powers.

Eleven-year-old Amelia Fairwick is eagerly waiting for her widowed father to return from his business trip. But a letter arrives with shattering news - Papa has been lost in a terrible hotel fire. Now Amelia must leave her London home to live in America with a relative she has never met. Amelia thinks things can’t get much worse when stern Cousin Charlotte travels with her on the voyage across the Atlantic. Amelia must stay alone in the cabin, talking to no one. But the day the ship arrives in New York City is worst of all....

London, 1811: The twisting streets of Wapping hold many an untold sin. Bounded by the Ratcliffe Highway to the north and the Dock to the south, shameful secrets are largely hidden by the noise of Trade. But two families have fallen victim to foul murder, and a terrified populace calls for justice. Based on the real-life story of the gruesome Ratcliffe Highway murders, The English Monster takes us on a voyage across centuries. A brilliantly imagined debut from a major new literary voice.

Both pseudoscience and science fiction (SF) are creative endeavors that have little in common with academic science, beyond the superficial trappings of jargon and subject matter. The most obvious difference between the two is that pseudoscience is presented as fact, not fiction. This engaging and well-researched audiobook explores a wide range of intriguing similarities and differences between pseudoscience and the fictional science found in SF. 

Taking the lessons Machiavelli recorded in his political masterpiece The Prince, Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's Chief of Staff, shows how they can still apply today. Illustrating each of Machiavelli's maxims with a description of events that occurred during Tony Blair's time as Prime Minister, Powell provides a gripping account of life inside Number 10 and draws lessons from those experiences for anyone today who has access to the levers of power.

Sung in moments of personal isolation or on state occasions watched by millions, “Amazing Grace” has become an unparalleled anthem for humankind. How did a simple Christian hymn, written in a remote English vicarage in 1772, come to hold such sway in all corners of the modern world? With this short, engaging cultural history, James Walvin offers an explanation.

Orson Welles' 1938 radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds has done much to obscure the real brilliance of the original work. Written at a time when "science-fiction" did not exist as a genre, The War of the Worlds was a new departure in literature. Author H.G. Wells, deeply committed to social improvement in turn-of-the-century Britain, used extra-terrestrial invasion to predict the results of a not-entirely-impossible violent upheaval in contemporary society: for "Martians" read "bolsheviks."